Book excerpt: The Dog Log, written as a daily notation to the sheriff's department, begins as a simple complaint about a barking dog, but it soon becomes a powerful self-exploration and confessional. It's a touching, hilarious, and cleverly sneaky memoir of a man in Los Angeles who rediscovers himself when his elderly neighbor falls and he must reluctantly tend to her two badly behaved Yorkshire terriers. What he discovers in her apartment shocks him into a surprising decision, and by addressing her problems, he inadvertently resolves his own. With humor and honesty, The Dog Log looks into big-city loneliness, heartbreak, and old age, but then climbs into the light. When one man knocks on his neighbor's door, and his life changes forever.